S’on le recouvre, c’est merveille.
Alors, je m’abbaissai tout bas,
Sans bruit je marchai pas à pas,
Et baisai ses lèvres pourprines:
Savourant un tel bien, je dis
Que tel est dans le Paradis
Le plaisir des âmes divines.
With just such sweet absurdities, such pardonable insincerities, the poets of Elizabeth’s England fill their amorous verse. George Gascoigne “swims in heaven” if his mistress smiles upon him; John Lyly unhesitatingly asserts that Daphne’s voice “tunes all the spheres;” and Lodge exhausts the resources of the vegetable and mineral kingdoms in searching for comparisons by which to set forth the beauties of Rosalind. The philosophy of love is alike on both sides of the Channel, and expressed in much the same terms of soft insistence. Carpe diem is, and has always been, the lover’s maxim; and the irresistible eloquence of the lyric resolves itself finally into these two words of warning, whether urged by Celt or Saxon. Herrick is well aware of their supreme significance when he sings:—
Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying: